Thanks for reading today’s update of Follow Me Trades

On November 21, 2016, TradingSchools.Org published a highly positive review of a swing and position trading service named Follow Me Trades. This article is an update; with a brief history of the company and the person behind Follow Me Trades, as well as an update regarding verified performance since the last review.

Follow Me Trades is owned and operated by Dean Jenkins, living and working out of Olympia, Washington.

Dean Jenkins of Follow Me Trades

Dean Jenkins is a former Intel Corp and NEC executive that earned his MBA from the University of Washington. After 20 years of being a pitiful numbers cruncher, and as he would describe it (a slave laborer) he finally cashed out and retired. As you can probably imagine, his stock in Intel was worth more money that most people can imagine. He was in the right place, at the right time.

In 2006, after retiring from Intel Corp, Dean decided to follow his heart…he decided to become a Christian minister. Usually, at this point, we can start rolling our eyes in cynicism, disbelief, and extreme caution. The red shades of hucksterism never looked so nice, when worn by a slick talking investment guru. In fact, whenever a trading guru starts talking Jesus…whatever remains in my stomach usually curdles with indigestion.

However, with Dean Jenkins, everything regarding his supposed faith checked out. After retiring from Intel Corp, he went on to earn an MA in Pastoral Ministry from Northwest Nazarene University and then started a church. If you want to call it that.

It’s more of a soup kitchen and a refuge for people with a boatload of personal problems. Considering that Dean is pretty new to that whole minister thing, I suppose it’s easier to find folks willing to listen to his message of redemption when he is offering a kind hand and a warm meal.

Anyway, let’s talk about the performance of the trading service.

Follow Me Trades Performance Figures

On our original review, we were able to confirm the following performance, based upon a $100k portfolio:

2013 a return of 57%

2014 a return of 37%

2015 a return of 28%

The original review did not include the year 2016. The following are the updated trades for 2016: ($100k portfolio)

What I find interesting is the mix of both long and short trades. As you probably already know, we have been in a bull market for nearly 8 years. So a performance summary heavily slanted towards long only trades should be highly suspect. In a bull market, a monkey throwing darts at a newspaper is proven to outperform even the smartest ‘hedge fund experts’.

Hedge Fund Geniuses

We are now half-way through 2017, and so I also want to include the performance summary for the 2017 closed trades, as well as trades that are currently active and open.

The following performance table has been confirmed and verified as authentic:

Up 10%, pretty darn good.

For 2017, there are also a handful of trades currently open. The following trades are ‘mark to market’ as of June 26, 2017. They are current and actively moving…

As so, for the year, Dean Jenkins is currently up $21k on the $100k portfolio. Looks pretty good to me.

However, these currently active trades could quickly take a turn for the worse. You also need to understand this…

Affiliate and Promotional Relationship

As I stated during the original review, TradingSchools.Org has a sales and affiliate relationship with Dean Jenkins of Follow Me Trades. This is obviously a conflict of interest. The audience needs to be aware of this. With a spirit of full transparency, I want to also inform the audience that I have earned a total of $5,724 in total revenue since this relationship began.

Some may snort with disdain regarding this relationship. However, the audience needs to also realize that running this stupid blog has been a massive time suck. With little pay. Lots of headaches. And a multitude of unpublished and unmentioned legal battles with charlatans attempting to suppress free speech. In short, I am not getting rich. More like barely breaking even.

With this in mind, this cute little button is an affiliate link, with a ‘special offer’ for TradingSchools.Org readers:

Customer Complaints and Refund Policy

Thus far, the complaints regarding Dean Jenkins have been refreshingly few. In fact, there has only been one complaint. Every business is going to have a few complaints. Even Jesus had a few complaints regarding the quality of the free wine and fish.

Dean has a liberal refund policy. If you are not happy, for any reason…your money is promptly returned. Period. End of discussion.

Interviews with Current and Former Subscribers

TradingSchools.Org has been in contact with several parties that have been subscribers of the service. Several current, and a couple of former. All of the feedback was good.

The one complaint that did stick out–the trading was boring. Quite simply, the customer was looking for “more action”.

If you are looking for lots of action, a fast pace, and scalping of stocks…this service is not going to work for you. Its slow work. Dean likes to let his trades run. And then run some more. He is the model trend trader.

Wrapping Things Up

Its really nice when I can write an updated review and people are actually doing well. It seems like the moment I write a positive review, the service turns to crap. But with Follow Me Trades, things have been working out really well. Hopefully, the trend continues. When stuff I recommend takes a dive, it makes me look terrible. Maybe that’s why I might recommend one or two trading services per year. And with extreme caution.

When stuff I recommend takes a dive, it makes me look and feel terrible. Maybe that’s why I might recommend one or two trading services per year. And with extreme caution.

If you have spent any amount of time reading this blog…good reviews are as rare as a full eclipse.

Thanks for reading. And I would love to read your opinions below. Even the haters and trolls will find some love.

Just finalized external, objective, CPA firm audit of my results. Will be done each quarter, starting with Q2 2007, first report is here: https://followmetrades.com/verified/ I’m sure there will be skeptics, but show me another advisory service doing this . . .

Dean and FMT is a scam… I’m surprised that I’m the only one that notices it. Is it just pure coincidence that most of the losing trades are option trades and most of the winning trades are stock trades? If you know anything about options, you know that you want to have options if you are going to lose, but have stocks if you are going to win – if you have equal the option price equal your risk in equities. By just doing this “magic trick”, he’s turned a break even performance into a 24% gain. I followed him… Read more »

Take a look at the CTIC trade in the table that Emmett posted in the update. It gapped below my stop resulting in a bigger loss than planned (risk per trade is 2% or $2000 in $100k portfolio.) If I were trying to “shade” the results I wouldn’t post the shares trade result for one like that. The results I post are the trades I actually took in my account, shares or options.

Emmett was very clear that he is getting a commission from sales from this update.

Hi, I have been a happy subscriber with Dean & FollowMeTrades for over a year now and I’m pleasantly satisfied! I have taken his Master Trader Training Course & also included in that is an Stock Option Basics Coures and a Ichimoku Cloud Training Course. Dean is very honest, he answers emails and best of all he will have a individual phone conference with you at anytime. What I can tell anyone that reads my review is that I’m totally satisfied with Dean & the FollowMeTrades service, I am a profitable trader now and I have found a home with… Read more »

My wife and I trade as a team. We have been trading for over 20 years and have purchased many trading products and have been in a variety of trading rooms. We have our share of war stories and victories, but we have had trouble developing a solid trading plan. Based off of just a few months of live trading with Dean we are confident that we’ve found the path to success. We like Dean’s trading plan. It is solid! We appreciate his honesty , something that is really rare in the world of trading. He shares his thoughts on… Read more »

I went through 3 different services that are on this site before I came across Dean’s service.. I am still pretty new to the service, but don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. Dean takes his time and goes into great detail when reviewing charts in his webinars. He has a wealth of knowledge and does not hesitate to share it. He is always eager to answer questions. The best part of Dean’s service is that I am actually in the green and making profits. Thanks Dean!!!

Dean generally buys calls and puts with the exception being a stock where options aren’t traded. The quantity is determined by the distance from the entry price to the stop loss point. The maximum quantity he’ll take on any trade is set such that if the stop loss point is hit you will lose no more than 2% of your account value. I’m certainly not a spokesman for the group but I think that is probably why you’re calculating a discrepancy.

Hi Emmett. I notice the total absolute value of all the current open positions is over $200K, but it says the results are based on a 100K account so how can this be? Based on these current open positions a 100K account would have to be maxed out on margin to hold over 200K in trades. Technically it appears the account and results are based on a minimum of a 200K account value. That means that if he has $21K in profit so far this year than his actual return is only around 10% and not 20%. Still a healthy… Read more »

30 percent is a large portion allocated to one position, but I believe Dean stated that he calculates his position sizing based on his stop which never exceeds 2 percent of the portfolio. Large position size relative to portfolio could be risky but that also depends on the stock. Of course you can have event risk in a stock and lose much more than 2 percent in a catastrophe, but if he has a decent hedge on some of that risk can be mitigated. As far as leverage it comes down again to what you are risking per trade provided… Read more »

Margin accounts with options can usually be double the option “buying power” of the account. As for the updated review, it sounds like clients have been more or less satisfied so far and the reporting of results sounds consistent.. It’s nice to see Emmett has been transparent about his affiliation. How else is trading schools going to keep running along with the security needed and legal needed. Though I would have preferred ts use other avenues such as donation sites etc. Though not perfect like anything is, imo it’s still a lot more rational as a review site than the… Read more »

Joe, thanks for your question. The name of the service is “Stock and Options Picks.” When I publish the trades to my subscribers, I publish the parameters, based on analysis of the underlying chart, to trade it either with outright shares or with options. I provide the details of the option contract for the trade. I am clear with subscribers that I am taking the options trade nearly every time. There are cases where trading the shares makes more sense (I.e. lower priced shares, or which account has available capital…) The option trades use far less capital, typically about 10%… Read more »

Thanks Dean for the reply. Nice to see someone who is finally providing proof of results. I am still unclear on a few things. 1)what does normalized to a 100K account mean? 2) In your year to date results you have some trades over 30K, for example you held $38K in one trade in BAX in which you made $4,448 in this one trade. This $4,448 is included in the total $21K net profit figure for the 2017 results thus far. Thus it appears this result has not been normalized? or if it has than it means you are allocating… Read more »

” you are allocating $38K to one trade on a 100K account which seems very risky? ” Jay, Jay, Jay. You are asking hard hitting questions that no one wants to answer. Surely not address in this 4.8 star review. But these are the questions that must be answered for anyone to make an intelligent decision on want is the risk .vs reward. My take is Emmett is so desperate to even give a good review he only skims the surface. The problem is to really evaluate a service a much more in depth analysis must be done, by answering… Read more »

Thank you Dean Jenkins and Kevin Davey for standing up for transparency in the face of possible harm from the public, unlike the fraud Al Brooks. According to Al Brooks’ webmaster RichardHK showing trading profits is dangerous, as Richard the guttersnipe wrote on Futures.io futures.io/trading-reviews-vendors/23611-al-brooks-trading-course-www-brookstradingcourse-com-33.html when asked if Al should provide evidence to clear up his previous marketing claims of professional trading success “Certainly not. With the high number of idiots in the US, make that gun-toting idiots, I would not want anyone to know if I was making good money trading. Plenty of lottery winners around who have destroyed… Read more »

Are you stating that the following performance numbers are based on trading the options as opposed to the underlining stock. Options trading carries with it a much greater risk. And this performance period has been during a bull market in stocks. If this the option trading performance do you have the returns based on trading the actual stocks.

Rob, the numbers are based on the actual trades I made, using both stock and options. the detailed tables have that information. Subscribers, of course, can execute the trades however they are comfortable with. I respectfully disagree that options inherently have “much great risk.” I believe that depends entirely on the option strategy and how the trades are managed. I only go long calls and long puts and get out; if /when the stop on the underlying shares is hit, and way before expiration approaches and theta decay accelerates.

I’ve been a subscriber to Dean’s trading room for one and a half years and plan to stay for quite a while! I checked out a lot of the webinars out there and listened to a whole lot of hucksters talk before deciding that Dean was someone I could trust and rely on. I tend to be a pretty skeptical person so many of Emmett’s one star ratings are about people I had previously checked out and fortunately had found unconvincing. I can say from following Dean in his trading room that the historical results you see are real. He… Read more »